Page 29 of Vengeance

Eileen drags me to my feet and out the room, leaving Pray behind.

“We’ve got to go.”

“But—” I cut myself off and suck in a sharp gasp at the next contraction. “Pray.”

Eileen takes note of my pause, gives me a onceover, and says, “Fuck. You’re in labor.”

“It’s not supposed to happen this fast,” I say as the contraction ends and we make our way to the garage to escape and get to the private jet I hope Bond has prepared.

“These kinds of things generally pay no mind to how we think things are supposed to happen.”

“But my doctor said it’s supposed to take hours. Maybe even a day for my first labor,” I manage to rush out before another contraction comes.

“Hopefully, he’s right then.”

She sounds like she has as much hope as I have despite my denial.

Eileen and I say nothing more as we make it to the garage where our escape car is. The children and Velia are already there when we open the door, ducked down under a compartment in the trunk of the car, just like they’re trained to if we have to escape.

“Why was that man here, Mama?” Leon asks immediately.

“I’ll tell you later, little one,” I say as Eileen puts me in the back seat.

“Aunty, where’s my mommy?” Velia asks.

I don’t answer. I can’t answer.

“We’ll talk about everything later. Now be quiet. I need to concentrate,” Eileen says, not particularly kindly but not unkindly either, as she gets into the driver’s seat.

The garage door raises and we spot three pairs of feet as it begins to lift. Eileen revs the engine, getting ready to gun the accelerator.

But then I spot the familiar silver pistol, put my hand on Eileen’s shoulder and say, “Wait.”

Viper ducks down under the garage door when it’s high enough and makes his way to us. Following behind him are Marcus and Jeune.

He takes one look in the car and doesn’t ask questions. Just looks at Eileen and says, “Move over. You’re going to need me to drive if we have any hope of getting to that fucking plane.”

13

Viper

Eileen has always been a “no news is good news” type of person. Even before I sent her to look after Dele, she was never prone to calling me to ask questions, confident in using her best judgment and explaining it or asking forgiveness afterward. A habit that never died from her CIA days where she was dropped in situations, left with an objective, and could go months without guidance or instruction. If I get a text from her, I know it’s something that she mostly has a handle on but can’t decide what the best course of action is between two options. If I get a call from her, I get concerned.

So as soon as I see her name show up on the screen of my phone, I’ve already pinged my security to get the jet ready. My second jet. The one that’s not publicly known to belong to me so I can go places and my enemies aren’t immediately alerted to my presence.

“What happened?” I ask.

“He’shere.”

I don’t need to ask who he is. There’s only one person she’d refer to as he and expect me to know who he is without further explanation.

Pray. He’s somehow gotten in New York and is wherever Dele is. Fuck.

“I’ll be there in three hours. Stall.”

Eileen, as usual, doesn’t complain and simply ends the call. Because there’s no telling whether or not they’ll be able to stall at all because she probably knows as much about why Pray is there as I do. Nothing. A problem in and of itself. Not that I’ve ever been able to keep total tabs on where Pray is and what he’s doing. But going to New York City to face Dele himself is a logistics move that I definitely should have been included in. With most of my competition dead or not really competition, there’s no question that I’m Pray’s most trusted and right hand man. Whether people think that as Viper or Adrian matter little to me. Just that they’ll fall in line behind either persona in lieu of Pray.

So for Pray to do something so drastic and leave me out, it means that maybe he doesn’t trust me as much as I thought. Maybe he’s onto the fact that I plan to betray him. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he knew not to bring me because of my known weakness for who he thinks is only Addy Bianchi.

---